Iraq: Hillary Clinton showed bad judgment on invasion

Hillary Clinton finally addressed her vote to invade Iraq in her pre-candidacy book, “Hard Choices,” calling it “a mistake” and blaming faulty intelligence supplied by the Bush administration.

Her vote was no mere “mistake”; it was monumentally bad judgment that she must own as a significant example of her much-touted “experience” in world affairs.

Bernie Sanders saw the same flawed intelligence, but he voted against the invasion of Iraq. Clinton not only voted to pursue the war that many foreign policy experts characterize as the most disastrous foreign policy blunder in this country’s history, but she, Bill Clinton and then Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe doubled-down. They recruited Gen. Wesley Clark to seek the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination as the “Anybody But Dean Candidate,” hoping to discredit Howard Dean, who vigorously campaigned against the Iraq misadventure.

As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton participated in the decision to overthrow Libya’s dictator - a decision that President Obama recently admitted was imperfect because possible negative results were not sufficiently addressed. Is that decision part of the allegedly superior experience qualifying her for the presidency?

I’m reminded of Oscar Wilde’s wise observation: “Experience is the name we give to our mistakes.”

The quality of Hillary’s experience matters more than quantity.

This story was originally published April 11, 2016 at 2:16 PM with the headline "Iraq: Hillary Clinton showed bad judgment on invasion."